Snakes, Nudity and Snowstorms

My last booking for 1976 was in Hamilton, Ontario at a historic hotel that had been around for over a century. Hanrahan's had once been home to gangsters and underworld characters in the early 1900s, who were making money on bootleg booze that was shipped by boat to Buffalo, New York. Now, its existence was hanging by the frayed elastic on strippers' G-Strings, hoping to make it another hundred years.

Hamilton was also my boyfriend, Jake's hometown, and where he lived with his wife. The one I always pretended he did not have. It was going to be a tough week. He and I couldn't hang out together openly. He knew too many people.

The stage at Hanrahan’s was huge. At least twenty feet across by ten feet long. It was situated against the back wall of the dining room/bar and could be viewed on three sides from all around the club. There was also a mirror behind the stage, so no matter what you did, or how you did it, every part of you could be viewed by the audience. Now that nudity was a thing in Ontario, that wasn’t good.

There was a huge service bar on one side of the entrance. No dainty waitresses at this place. All the waiters could have been bouncers. They didn’t have to lift weights to body build. All they had to do was lug around trays filled with beers and sandwiches for twelve hours every day. It was nonstop drinking and eating and hooting and hollering.

Hanrahan’s had a magnificent sound system with five-foot-high speakers, plus a spotlight, along with the traditional red and black lights all around the stage that would make hiding anything onstage a challenge. Trust me, I tried.

Charley, the assistant of everything, gave me my keys and surprised me by hefting my suitcases like they were pillows filled with down and showed me to my room. The rooms were adequate- not fancy. They had a bed, a nightstand, and a dresser. There were clean linens on the bed, along with towels and washcloths. The bathroom would be shared by all seven of the dancers and the people traveling with them. Great. My favorite; sharing a bathroom with strangers. There was also a large common area at the top of the stairs with chairs and a card table, with a tiny kitchen off to one side of the common area.

After two or three more girls got settled in their rooms, I ventured out to meet my competition that week and saw a familiar face. Wonderful. Lori, my good buddy from Oshawa, where I had met Jake.

“Hey, Tina! Oh my God. I can’t believe we’re working together again.” She gushed. “Did you see that stage? It’s huge.”

“Yeah, I saw it. Did you see the lighting?” I asked.

“Really cool.” She pattered on. “A spotlight!”

“Now that we have to be nude in Ontario,” I lamented, “I wasn’t happy to see that. Dancing nude here is going to be tricky.”

“Well,” She remarked, “we’re all in the same boat and it’s the first week of legal nudity. Maybe the management will go easy on us.”

I was doubtful about that. It all depended on how much competition this place had in the area as to whether or not they would demand extreme nudity.

Another familiar face popped out of a room down the hall. Wonderful. Mandy, a.k.a. Miss Waddle Duck, from last week in St. Catherines. I gritted my teeth and greeted her.

“Mandy, how nice to be working together again.”

“Oh, hello. You do know we are working nude this week.” She announced as if we didn’t already know.

“Oh, yeah,” Lori replied, “it’s not my favorite. But I can handle it.”

“Well,” Miss Waddle Duck continued, “I, for one, will be keeping my G-String on. Thank you very much.”

Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to do a full-on nude spread every show this week, just to irk her. Lori and I kept our mouths shut and retreated to the kitchen to check it out, so we could roll our eyes in peace.

“She’s kind of…um,” Lori began.

“A bitch?” I finished. Promising to tell her more later.

“So?” Lori asked, “did you have fun with your friend Jake, at Oshawa the week after I left?”

“Yeah. He was pretty nice.”, I told her, “You were right. I needed that.”

Deciding not to share too many details because I didn’t know who she would be running into this week. No sense in taking any chances.

“Hey, I got two new shows made in Toronto.” I shared.

“Great- did you get costumes done by Mr. Lee?”

“Yes. Thank you so much for that tip. He was brilliant. Come and see.”

I took her to my room and showed off the red pantsuit and the Cabaret costume. She was appropriately impressed.

Another dancer arrived, and Charley lugged her suitcases down the hall for her. I stopped him on his way back downstairs to ask where we could find a place to eat on a Sunday.

(I should explain, although I don't know why. Charley was an official dwarf. Half muscle and the other half was all heart. He was kind and patient, willing to listen to strippers with troubles any time of the day or night. Everyone loved him.)

He replied. “There’s a Chinese restaurant about two blocks down. It’s open ‘till eight tonight.”

I was ready to tug Lori along with me when my conscience started acting up and I knocked on Mandy’s door to invite her to dinner with us. “Mandy, we’re going to a Chinese restaurant in a little while. Why don’t you come with us?”

“Well. I’m not a big fan of Chinese food.” She told me.

“Okay, but there aren’t any other places open tonight. Maybe they will have some other things on the menu.” I pointed out.

After thinking it over, she agreed.

Lori went down the hall and knocked on the new girl’s door to invite her out as well. Pretty soon the four of us were trudging down the slushy sidewalk in the icy cold to the restaurant. We walked in and immediately got hit in the tastebuds by spicy, steamy aromas. I didn’t realize until then just how hungry I was.

As it turned out they didn’t have any English foods. We ordered poo-poo for four and even Mandy dug into the treats with gusto, despite not liking Chinese food.

After the introductions all around it was non-stop chatter about where we’d worked, where we were from, and whether we had boyfriends or not. The newest member of our group was Gayle, from Michigan, who had traveled through the Western part of Ontario. Now she was working her way through the East.

Lori brought up the subject of the nudity law change, and everyone had an opinion on it.

“I won’t be taking off my G-String this week. Let me explain why.” Mandy lectured us, “My contract does not call for nudity.”

“That’s a good point,” I agreed, despite my distaste for Miss Waddle Duck, “I hadn’t considered that angle.”

“I wonder if that makes a difference with the clubs, now that the law has changed.” Lori pondered while popping a shrimp Rangoon into her mouth.

Gayle said, “I don’t know. Last week we had to do nude on Friday and Saturday and my contract didn’t say nude on it either.”

“Shit,” I groused, “You’re right, last week in St. Catherines they asked us to do at least part of our sets nude. They weren’t too pushy about it though.”

Mandy declared, “Well, I didn’t do it and I still got paid.”

Lori suggested in between bites of egg rolls, “Maybe if we all just barely do the nude thing, they won’t ask for anything more.”

“That might work,” Gayle added, shoving something on a stick into her mouth.

“Ew, what was that?” I asked. “It looked like a rat popsicle.”

“I don’t know if it was a rat or not- but it was good.” She giggled through chewing sounds.

We finished our meals and ordered hot tea to go, then made the trip back to the hotel. It had begun snowing in earnest… and also in Hamilton that night.

I knew Lori wasn’t tethered anywhere permanently, so when we got back upstairs, I asked her, "What are your plans for Christmas? Are you going to visit your mom and dad?”

“Naw,” she shook her head. “It’s too far away. I’m gonna be here that week anyway. Might as well just stay put. How about you?”

“Yeah, me neither. I’ll probably just stay here with you then. That will help if we keep each other company.”

She wondered, “Do you think they’d mind if we decorated the hallway here for Christmas?”

“That’s a great idea. I wonder what Mandy and Gayle are doing that weekend?” I said as I walked to Mandy’s door and tapped on it.

“Hey, Mandy. It’s Tina.”

“Yeah, what’s wrong?” Mandy mumbled like she had marbles in her mouth.

“Lori and I were wondering if you have a place to go for Christmas?”

Mandy peered out of her half-opened door, “Um. I haven’t planned that far ahead. I’m here until the first of January. No point in going home for one day. What are you and Lori doing for Christmas?”

“As long as we’re going to be here during the holidays, we thought we’d decorate the hallway for Christmas and I don’t know, keep each other company.” I tentatively offered, “Are you in?”

“Maybe we could have our own Christmas party up here?” She wondered.

"That sounds like a great idea." I told her, then I said my goodnights to everyone, and took over the bathroom first before the germs got settled.

No phone this week to talk to Jake with. It was going to be a lonely week. Seeing him but not being able to be with him was going to be so hard. How on earth was that going to work, anyway?

As I was to discover, the next morning, that wasn’t going to be my only problem this week. I am obsessive/compulsive, which brings its own set of difficulties to my life. Add to that my hysterical fears of the dark, thunderstorms, slimy creatures and carnivorous insects, rodents, germs, bodily fluids, and other delightful phobias, and you’ll better understand my angst over the coming week.

Anxious to get to the bathroom first, before the germy hordes defiled it, I woke up early on Monday to get ready for the noon show. When I opened the door to my room, I was greeted by the sight of a ten-foot-long boa constrictor stretched out in the hallway, blocking my path to the bathroom. My mind went into overdrive and my body began to shake involuntarily. Shrieking in a blood-curdling, inhuman-sounding voice, I slammed the door shut, locked it, and shoved a pillow against the gap at the bottom of the door to keep the monster from slithering into my room.

How on earth did a snake get into the hotel in the middle of a snowstorm? Was I hallucinating? No. I probably wasn’t, because up and down the hall, alerted by my call of the wild, other doors were slamming shut and more women were screaming.

Too afraid to open my door even a crack, I pressed my ear to it to listen to conversations in the hallway.

“I told you not to let him out before we warned everyone.” A female voice scolded impatiently.

“He was getting edgy, after the trip. You wanna get bit? Just shut up and let me do my job.” A male voice argued.

"Well, put him back in his house before we get thrown out of here. Good grief, we aren’t here ten minutes and you’re starting a fucking riot.”

I heard thudding and rustling going on in the hallway, then footsteps plodding down to the other wing of rooms. The female voice yelled out, “It’s Okay, everybody. Ed’s back in his cage. You can come out.”

She reminded me of the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz, ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are…’ and all the good little munchkins scurried from their hiding places.

Doors up and down both wings of the floor cracked open, and eyeballs peeked out, checking to see if the monster was truly gone. I, for one, was hoping someone had dropped a house on the thing and didn’t plan on leaving my room until someone showed me the ruby slippers.

“Tina, Tina! Open up. It’s me, Lori.”

I quickly unlatched the door and pulled her inside, slamming the door shut and locking it again. “What the hell was that?”

“The feature dances with snakes. Oh, my God! She has two of them. I’m not going to be able to sleep this week.” She whined.

“Holy shit.” I agreed. “Me neither.”

There was another knock on the door. It was a terrified Mandy, “Did you see that thing? Did you see that thing?”

Lorie asked, “I’m not staying in my room alone all week with that thing crawling around. Can I bring my mattress in here with you?”

Mandy chimed in with, “I agree. Is there room for me in here too? I hate snakes. I won’t get a wink of sleep.”

The three of us took stock of my room and decided that there wouldn’t be room for two more mattresses. But we could take turns sharing the bed and maybe slide another mattress between the bed and the dresser at night.

“I’m going to be downstairs at the club a lot this week,” I promised. “No way am I hanging around with Mr. Slimy.”

“And I was worried about taking off my G-String.” Lori huffed.

Mandy agreed. “I guess there could be worse things, right?”

There were six strippers and one feature from noon until midnight. That meant we all had at least two hours between shows, give or take a few minutes, depending upon the length of our shows and the pauses in between dancers. Four shows a day wouldn’t be too hard with two hours in between to rest. Plus, the extra-long dinner break at six o’clock was the club’s Happy Hour. For $600. a week's paycheck, that was a pretty sweet deal. It was the most I’d been paid yet. In the states, that was feature pay.

Mandy, Gayle, Lori, and I were sitting in the lounge area of our floor when we saw the featured stripper and her boyfriend come out of their room. He was carrying the python on his shoulders, one hand clamped around its mouth.

We all dashed to our rooms and slammed the doors until they were well out of earshot. Whew. We were going to have to deal with that all week long. None of us were happy about it. We heard a bone-rattling scream echoing through the stairwell. I assumed another dancer had arrived and passed them on her way up to the rooms. Yes, indeed. Another nature lover joined us in the lounge.

“What the hell? What the hell? Is this a fucking zoo or a strip club?” She complained loudly while setting her suitcase down.

“ this week I think it’s a zoo.” I joked.

We introduced ourselves all around. This girl had just arrived from a four-week gig in the theaters in Ohio, where I had been booked about a year ago. Her name was Neiva Miller and she shocked us with her story. “I’m Amish. During Rumspringa, last year, I put on a bikini swimsuit for the very first time and realized that boys were looking at me and they liked what they saw. So, now I’m making a living showing it off.”

We all just sat there with our mouths gaping open, not knowing how to respond to her confession. She stared at us, wide-eyed for a moment then burst into a giggling jag. “Hahahaha! You fell for it. Do I sound like an Amish person?”

We joined in her laughter, realizing we’d been had.

“No, I’m from Holmes County in Ohio and everywhere I go people think I must be an errant Amish girl. You should have seen the looks on your faces. Nope, I’m just another regular stripper.” She continued, “I’m Neiva Miller. I just got done with theaters in Ohio.”

I was the first dancer after the feature. Following the feature wasn’t fun, to begin with, and I sure hoped to avoid her and her pet in the stairway. I grabbed my silky, black robe and headed down for my first show at Hanrahan’s. I was glad my cassettes were set up with announcements. It sounded more professional. I didn’t want to appear like a rookie.

My Jungle show music boomed from the speakers and the spotlight followed my form-fitting leopard print jumpsuit around the stage like it was attached to my ass. It wasn’t going to be easy to dodge, duck and dive the lights when my G-String came off. I had pulled a chair onto the stage during the announcement and when I did my chair gymnastics routine to Wild Thing, it seemed like this crowd was going to like me. After my floor routine with splits and yoga moves to Chakacha’s Jungle Fever, there was no doubt in my mind. I decided to use my black twirling cape for the last minute of the Jungle Fever song for my nude bit. Now you see it. Now you don’t.

As I made my way through the audience to go back upstairs, I realized why the feature hadn’t passed me in the stairwell. She, her boyfriend, and all ten feet of her pet were chatting with the customers, as they asked questions about the python. I have no idea how the girl managed to hold that thing. It must have weighed as much as she did.

I got dressed in street clothes quickly, so I could go back down and watch my competition while I grabbed lunch. Lori was next after me, then Mandy, Gayle, and Neiva. The last stripper hadn’t yet arrived.

Charley, the waiter/ assistant everything, came over to where I was sitting and asked if he could bring me lunch. I ordered a cheeseburger and fries with ginger ale.

“You want a shot of something in that drink?” He asked.

“Nope. You don’t want to see me drunk. Trust me.” I laughed.

In a few minutes, he brought my lunch over and left me happily chewing away. I was starved. Now I knew why they had put in a little kitchen upstairs. No breakfast here. I’d have to find a grocery store nearby and pick up some snacks.

Lori passed my table after her show and asked me to wait for her so she could get lunch. Mandy did her usual show, without removing her G-String. ‘Good for her’, I thought, until I saw Henri, the day manager, approach and speak sternly with her in the stairwell. Uh, oh. They weren’t going to go easy on us this week. I just hoped they were satisfied with my one-minute, hide-n-seek nudity.

Lori had made it downstairs in time to see all of Gayle’s show with me. She ordered a steak and cheese hoagie and a coke. Between bites, we talked about the stage and the audience and watched Gayle’s routine. At the end of her show, she did a floor routine to Let’s Get it On by Marvin Gaye, removing her G-String seductively at the very last second. Well played, Gayle, well played. She had practically no actual nude time. However, the way she made them wait for it was very sexy.

I watched to see if Henri was going to accost her as he did Mandy. Nothing. If you did it right, you could get away with practically no nudity. Good to know.

There was some commotion at the hotel entrance. It was the last stripper arriving. Charley ran to meet her at the door and helped with the luggage, taking her upstairs and explaining the show times and rules.

Neiva came down for her set and dropped the cassette with her show off at the sound booth. I half expected her to show up onstage in an Amish dress, apron, and cap. Instead, she wore a silver jumpsuit and danced to mostly disco tunes. She was a very good dancer. I never got into disco style myself and was always impressed with the girls who could follow specific dance moves.

She had unnatural blond hair and had even dyed the carpet to match the drapes. She was not shy about nudity… for an Amish girl. She did a fully nude floor routine to whistles and yells from the crowd, which was thinning out after the lunch run. After working in the theaters, she probably had gotten used to the nudity. I just hoped her show didn’t spark any outrage by the management about how the rest of us chose to do our shows.

Lori and I just exchanged looks. I said, “Uh, oh. I hope that doesn’t mean the rest of us are going to be asked for full-on naked floor routines.”

“You and me both,” She agreed.

Lori had also chosen to reveal the ‘carpet’ at the last minute of her set, like me. We were crossing our fingers, hoping that would be enough.

The final stripper of the week came downstairs for her show and passed a cassette tape to the sound man on her way to the stage. She looked like an old-time stripper. She wore a red sequined gown with a feather boa, red spike high heels, and a wig piled high with bronze-colored curls. I was hoping for a seductive, but modest show.

One did not always get what one hoped for.

“Gentlemen, give a big round of applause for Connie Lingus, burlesque queen of New Orleans!" Blared from the speakers, dashing any hopes I had for a modest strip routine. Old-time bump and grind blues poured out of the speakers as Connie snagged customers with her feather boa and nuzzled their heads between her boobs or her legs, depending on what was exposed at the time.

Her signature finale was squatting, fully nude, in the direction of the audience on all three sides of the stage, so that no one was left without a good view of her kidneys and other internal organs.

Lori and I just looked at each other and decided to go upstairs before Connie brought out the speculum for closer examination.

“Good Lord!” I whispered in the safety of the stairwell, “What was that?”

“I don’t know. But I’m not going to try and compete with it.” Lori replied, still in shock.

Well, I hoped the management was happy. They were going to get extreme nudity this week, without Lori, Mandy, Gayle, or me contributing.

My floor routine needed intervention. I took the mirror off the wall of my room and set it on the floor, leaning it against the mopboard. I slipped a G-String on and placed my little rug on the floor in front of the mirror, trying to figure out how to do a floor routine in the nude without showing anything.

I tried doing a split sideways. It worked, but how on earth was I going to get down to the floor without showing off everything I owned? I tried to lower myself to the floor, then remove the G-String. Better. Now what? There was no way to delicately extricate me from a side split in the nude. I tried to transition to a Chinese split with a rollover to the front, leaving my privates behind me. That seemed to work with only a split second of exposure if someone had binoculars and very good vision. Hey, I’d be nude, and I’d be doing a floor routine. They shouldn’t complain, right?

Except for the screaming of the crowd for Connie’s show, which could be heard all the way upstairs behind two fire doors, the afternoon went smoothly. I pulled out the blues show, which I thought I’d retired but I needed a boost from a well-worn show to help me through the nudity deal. With only a few seconds of accidental exposure, I managed to squeak by with a nude floor routine to At Last, by Etta James. The afternoon manager, Henri, didn’t berate me in the stairwell, so I must have passed his test. Fine. I could do this, I told myself.

Lori was staying on her feet for her entire show, not daring to try a floor routine in the nude. Mandy, after being scolded by Henri, pulled off her G-String about halfway through her last song and that seemed to satisfy the management. Lori and I had a chance to finally watch Elise the snake charmer do her show.

Elise drifted through the crowd to the stage wrapped in python. The snake was completely wound around her shoulders and hips, her arm supported the tail to keep from dragging it on the floor. Once onstage the poor girl could hardly move. She had all she could do to balance and walk back and forth with the snake. After the second song, her boyfriend relieved her of the snake and held it offstage until she was ready for a floor routine. Her floor routine consisted of passively letting the snake crawl over her.

I would be having nightmares all week. Ugh. I expected to have a very crowded room all week, with the other girls too scared to sleep alone with the monsters in the house.

When we all finished our four o’clock show we waited for each other to get changed, having decided to go back to the Chinese restaurant for dinner. Neiva and Connie had taken a cab to another restaurant across town, which was good because none of the rest of us were in the mood to entertain the women who were making it tough for us this week.

It was below zero and snow was falling again when we left for dinner. By the time we got to the restaurant, the warm steamy atmosphere could have easily lulled us to sleep. We ordered our favorites that evening and ate in silence, everyone thinking about the changes made by fully clothed pencil pushers in some government office building that was going to detrimentally affect our livelihoods from then on. We all worried about the same thing. This was just the first week- what would be asked of us after the novelty of watching women dancing nude at the end of their shows wore off.

Mandy broke the silence by asking about our Christmas party plans, “Has anyone thought more about a Christmas party?”

“Nope,” I said. “I’ve been worrying about snakes and G-Strings all day.”

“Yeah, me too,” Gayle admitted. “I’m a little pissed off with Neiva. There’s no reason for her to be doing full-on spreads this week. You know they’ll be asking us for more and more every week.” She complained.

We all agreed with her. It was a slippery slope.

“I think we should get our minds off what might happen and start planning some fun for the Christmas week.” Lori said, “It’s only one week away. Can you believe that?”

It suddenly struck me that Jake would be spending next week with his wife and her family. I wouldn’t see him at all. Last year I spent a fun Christmas with my dancer friend, Marjorie, and her family. This year I would be missing Jake and staying alone in my hotel room. I started tearing up, swiping away at my eyes and blowing my nose on a napkin. I went to the ladies’ room to wash my hands and throttle my emotions.

Lori followed me and caught me in the act. “What’s going on, Tina? Are you missing your family?”

“Oh, God. No. Listen, Lori, you can’t share this with anyone, promise?”

“All right,” She promised, “What’s wrong?”

“Remember the guy I was with in Oshawa this summer?”

“Uh, huh. A little fun and then you went your way, right?” She grilled, eyeing me with suspicion.

“Not exactly. We’ve been seeing each other ever since.” I confessed.

“You said he was married.”

“He is. I- I just can’t walk away from him. I want to but I can’t.” I told her.

“Holy shit.” She whispered.

“Yeah, Lori, holy shit. He lives in Hamilton, so we can’t spend time together while I’m here. He’s going to spend Christmas week at home with his wife and her family. It's going to kill me. I swear to God, Lori, sometimes when I know they’re together I want to slit my wrists just to stop thinking about him.”

“Jesus, Tina, don’t talk like that. You’re scaring me. Do you know how many men you see in a week? Dozens of them. Dozens and most of them aren’t married. Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“That’s what another friend told me when I was still with my ex, Frank. It was a lot easier to leave him than to even think about leaving Jake behind. There’s just something about him I can’t give up, and it’s not only the sex. When he’s with me I feel loved and wanted.”

“I’m not telling anyone, especially if he’s from here. But I am going to tell you to start working on reasons to end this- you have to.” She warned me. Then, just like Roxanne mentioned in Rochester, she said, “They never leave- no matter how much they promise. The reason they have to see someone on the side is that they’re too cowardly to end one relationship to begin another.”

Mandy came into the ladies’ room to check on us. “Everything all right in here? We’re getting ready to leave.”

“Um, yeah. Just catching up on the last couple of months. We worked in Oshawa together in July.” Lori told her and we followed Mandy back to pay our bills and headed to the hotel, stopping at a little variety store across the street from Hanrahan’s to pick up snacks, cigarettes, and breakfast food- especially coffee.

Mandy decided to bunk in my room that night and Lori stayed in Gayle’s room. No one wanted to be alone with the snakes wandering the halls at all hours of the day and night. I crammed a bath towel into the crack at the bottom of my door and made Mandy promise to wake me up if she needed the bathroom at night. I wasn’t about to have either of us wandering around alone.

In the morning I had to make another emergency trip to the bathroom. After checking the hallway for snakes, I dashed over and just made it to the toilet in time. What the heck was going on with my stomach? That was the third time this week food hadn’t agreed with me.

When I got back to the room Mandy was awake and she said, “I wasn’t going to tell anyone, but I got engaged before my booking in St. Catherines last week.”

“Oh-“ I choked out, trying to sound happy for her.

Spending the past three years wrapped up in my woes had made me lose the ability to empathize or rejoice with other people’s bad or good fortune. I was turning into a bitter, closed-off, selfish person. Maybe I deserved all the misfortunes I’d suffered. That needed some earnest soul-searching, and when Ernest got done, I should try it too.

From the hallway, we heard, “Snakes are out!”

I peeked out the door and was horrified at the sight that met my eyes. There were two terrified bunnies bunched up next to the wall and the pythons were cruising over, eyeing their prey, calmly assessing whether to go for the rib-eye or the legs.

I dodged into the now germy bathroom and tried to forget that image as I showered and got ready for my first show. Starting the day with my Jungle Fever show, I scanned the audience for a glimpse of Jake. There was no sign of him yet. Disappointed, I changed into jeans and a blouse and came back down for lunch.

As I was finishing up my steak sandwich, Charley, the assistant of everything, pulled up a chair and joined me, asking, “What’s the matter, Tina? You look like you lost your best friend.”

“Hey, Charley,” I said, as I pushed around French fries on my plate, not feeling very hungry. “You should be a psychic. I’m waiting for my boyfriend to finish up a job in Whitby this week. I was hoping he’d be here by now.”

“Ah, working on the road is tough on relationships, isn’t it?” He commiserated with me.

“It sure is. Are there rules about boyfriends staying with us in the hotel if they’re in town?” I asked, “I sure would like him to stay with me this week, especially with the snake thing and all. Ew.” I shuddered.

“Naw, there ain’t no problem with your man staying with you here. All the girls do it. Hey, Lori asked if there were Christmas trees for sale near here.”

“That’s right.” I said, “most of us are staying through the holiday and we thought it would be fun to decorate the upstairs and have a little Christmas party since we can’t go home.”

“That’s a really good idea.” He agreed. “I know a place where they sell trees a couple of blocks away. Maybe Santa will bring you, ladies, a tree if you’re good. You should decorate it with G-Strings!” He teased. “Connie will be getting freaking coal this year though. What a pig.”

“I won’t argue with that. Sheesh- it makes it hard for the rest of us to follow that kind of show.” Then, I asked him, “where do you shop around here? We found the variety store and picked up some breakfast stuff, but I wanted to look for a gift for my boyfriend this week.”

He scratched his scruffy beard and said, “Shit, James Street is about three blocks from here and you have your pick of stores there. They got everything. Some great restaurants too, if you get tired of burgers and steak sandwiches, ”

“Thanks, Charley. Maybe my guy will show up today.” I said hopefully, as he scooped up my lunch plates and bustled away Charley style. Some people just elicit warm feelings and the urge to hug. Charley was like that.

The day dragged on and by the four o’clock show it was snowing pretty hard again, making me lose hope that Jake would be able to visit me. The crowd had thinned out due to the storm and there were only a couple dozen customers for my Blues show. I guess I wasn’t going to retire it yet. I always seemed to grab that tape when I needed to sleepwalk through a set.

Still no Jake. I trudged sullenly upstairs to get changed and decided to eat dinner in my room instead of going out in the snow. When I returned to the club to order dinner the crowd was even smaller. We were going to have a very slow evening.

Gayle also grabbed a meal to go, and we went back upstairs to the little lounge area to eat. When Lori and Mandy finished their shows, they got dinner and joined us. I told them about the great shopping that was only three blocks away from us and we made plans to take a trolley the next afternoon when our four o’clock show was over.

“It’ll be so great to go someplace different to eat and to see what kind of shops they have there,” Mandy said, between mouthfuls of French fries. “I want to get something for my fiancé, Jeff.”

“Ooh, a fiancé!” Lori burbled. “Nice. That’s wonderful. I’m so happy for you.”

“Well,” Mandy explained, “we’ve been dating for two years. I wasn’t sure we’d ever get to this stage.”

“Gayle added, “well, here you are- at that stage. We should celebrate.”

The Grinch in me refused to be elated for Mandy on the inside, no matter what my face was doing on the outside. I needed heavenly intervention before my heart shrank into a dried-up little prune. I made up my mind to search for a Catholic Church with open confessional hours on Saturday mornings. I hadn’t been to confession since I left home and boy, did I have some interesting sins to share with whatever poor, unsuspecting priest was on duty that day.

We all decided to get ready for our next show and go downstairs early to celebrate Mandy’s engagement. At about seven o'clock we descended, giggling and joking amongst ourselves as we burst into the club. There may have been a dozen foolhardy souls who braved the winter storm for nude women and beer tonight. There were more employees than customers.

Charley came over to our table and pulled up a chair. “So, what brings you, girls, down early tonight? It’s gonna be pretty slow if we even stay open. The weatherman is promising another six inches tonight… but he’s probably just exaggerating for his wife- ha!”

We all cackled appropriately, and Mandy told him,

“Charley, we’re celebrating my engagement tonight.” She flashed the ring for the first time this week.

“Congratulations. That does call for a celebration. How about a round on the house to start you off?” Charley offered.

We gave him our drink orders and wondered if the club was going to shut down before our eight o’clock shows. That would be nice, as long as we still got paid. We could enjoy a good party and not have to stumble onto the stage later. A couple more customers drifted out the door and it was looking more and more possible. There truly was a Santa Claus.

Charley and another biker waiter brought us our drinks and we toasted Mandy’s engagement. Then, when the waiter and Charley were out of earshot, we toasted to the chance of not having shown that night.

“Snow, baby, snow!” Lori called out and we clinked glasses.

By then, most of the wait staff had been sent home for the night, leaving Charley and two others playing pool on the other side of the bar. The kitchen staff also went home. It looked like the four of us, a couple of waiters and two bartenders were the only ones left in the club.

Gayle and I trekked up to the service bar to return our glasses and ask for refills all around. The bartender said, “You may not have to do evening shows tonight, the way it’s looking.”

We tried to look non-committal, almost as though we’d be heartbroken to miss our shows. As soon as he turned away, we grinned at each other conspiratorially and ambled back to the table with the refills, just about clicking our heels on the way.

“So,” I teased, “we may have a night off if these guys take off and no one else comes in.”

We all drank to that again and Gayle had a very good idea. “Let’s go order another round of drinks, in case they do close. We can take them upstairs and continue our party.”

Mandy and Lori made the bar trip this time and when they came back, they confirmed that our toasts had worked. “We are officially off the clock, ladies!”

We cheered almost as loud as the audience did for good old Connie Lingus’ squat thrusts this week.

“Mandy’s engagement party has just begun!” Lori hollered.

As we finished up our third round of drinks, Charley and the other waiter came over to the table with a bottle of peppermint schnapps and a box filled with bar-sized bags of pretzels and potato chips for us to take upstairs. “Enjoy your party, ladies! We’re going home before we can’t.”

The last call was announced, and the five stragglers left the club. We took our booty and went back upstairs to prepare for a doozy of a hangover on Wednesday. None of us were heavy drinkers, so we had quite a time making it up those stairs, leaning on each other and giggling every time someone tripped. It looked as though John and Elise had gone out for dinner in this storm. Neiva and Connie were upstairs sitting at the card table playing double solitaire.

Gayle ordered, “Get that shit off the table, we have a party to go to-ha!”

We deposited our bottle of peppermint schnapps on the table along with the bounty of salty treats and invited the other two to join in our celebration of Mandy’s engagement.

Lori grabbed some coffee cups from the little kitchen and some cheese and crackers for our party. Connie went back to her room and changed into sweatpants and a baggy sweater and let her real hair out to breathe. She also brought back a bottle of rum and a bottle of red wine to add to the fixings.

After we all changed into pajamas and sweaters the revelry continued.

Looking out the window while I was getting changed it was pretty obvious that we may not even have work on Wednesday if it kept up at this pace. We’d be able to sleep off our hangovers in peace.

I don’t know if it was the booze and the general atmosphere of freedom that evening, but Connie was a lot of fun. She entertained us most of the night with tales of working all over the states in different theaters and clubs.

“Who was your agent in the states?” Gayle asked Connie.

“Teddy Riesman. He’s an old-time talent booker. I’ve worked with him for years.” She said. “He’s out of Minnesota, but he has a deal with George in Toronto. Before I take off from here, I’ll give you his number in case you want to work in the states again.”

Neiva had disappeared for a while and when she returned her eyes were glazed over and she smelled like a skunk.

“Holy shit, woman. What kind of perfume do you use? Ode de Peppa Le Pew?” Lori asked her.

Neiva started laughing uncontrollably. I thought she was going to wet her pants. What the hell was so funny? When Neiva caught her breath she told us, “This guy I banged last night gave me a dime bag of primo weed. I’ll share if anyone wants some.”

I’d smoked it once in college but didn’t like it. Besides, nothing could get me to share a joint with a room full of strangers or friends, for that matter. Ugh. The thought of putting something in my mouth that had previously been inside other mouths made me sick to my stomach. Connie and I both declined the offer, which surprised me, as I would have thought Connie was a worldly woman, open to just about anything.

Neiva brought the baggie and some rolling papers down from her room and even Mandy joined in passing the joint. I tried to not watch, just in case strings of spit trailed out as it was passed. Excuse me for a moment. I need to vomit.

While the rest of the crew was getting hammered with pot, Connie and I opened the wine and nibbled on the snacks Charley had rounded up for us. She told me, “You should be a feature, Tina. Your dancing is that good. Your doll act could put you right up there, you know?”

“Thanks. That means a lot to me.” I told her. “My goal is to become a feature next year. My boyfriend planned on helping me with props and lighting. He has the winter off and we’re going to travel together.”

“You really should get pictures done. That’s the key. Most of the other stuff is just icing on the cake. It’s the pictures that get you the big money.” She explained.

“My agent up here wants me to get my hair styled and gain some weight before I get pictures done.”

“So, what’s keeping you?” She challenged. “Find a hairdresser, get your hair done, and eat more.”

“It sounds easy, doesn’t it?” I laughed. “I lost about thirty pounds one summer when I was traveling with my ex and nothing I do seems to put it back on. Misty wants me to go to her hairdresser in Toronto for my hair.”

“I hugged Connie and said, “You are so nice. You remind me of the girl who helped me when I first started dancing. I’m glad we got to talk a little tonight.”

My head was starting to spin, so I said my goodnights to the crew and did my bathroom routine by rote. I left my door unlocked for Mandy if she needed to double up again to stay safe with the snakes down the hall and spent some time with the lights off, watching the snow fall outside my window.

The last thing I remember thinking was if Elise and John were going to get back safely. It was a terrible night to be out and about in a strange town. Perhaps my soul was still redeemable.

Morning rolled around, with boiling, dark gray storm clouds dumping more snow on us. Outside my window, I could see snow piled up on Barton Street, and the cars in the parking lot behind the hotel were unrecognizable white humps. It looked like we were all going to be able to sleep off our hangovers without being disturbed.

I made a quick emergency trip to the bathroom, making a hangover deposit of green vomit into the toilet. Yuck. Then, I boiled some water in a pan on the hotplate in our little kitchen and made a cup of instant coffee before going back to my warm bed. It wasn’t the best coffee I’d ever had, but it was hot and sort of reminded me of coffee.

Before I drifted back to sleep, I thought about the previous night and the conversation with Connie, whom I had thought was a pig and not worthy of my time before getting to know her better. Mandy, as well, whom I had written off because of a few awkward encounters in St. Catherines. Even my friendship with Lori stung my conscience due to my jealousy over Jake when I first met him. The stunning realization of my shortcomings was humbling. I was a mean, jealous, judgmental person. Unless I changed, my life was unlikely to get better.

My relationship with Jake? I couldn’t even go there. Not yet. That would expose the true ugliness of my soul. I wasn’t ready to face it.

During my restless morning nap, I had a dream about Jake and an imaginary woman, who must have been his wife. She was visibly pregnant and standing on one side of the world during an earthquake that split the globe in two. I was standing on the other side of the world and Jake stepped over onto her side, just before the world collapsed. I woke with a start. That dream was so vivid I can still remember it to this day.